I’m watching you

I’ve got a stalker.

Sounds fun doesn’t it. It isn’t. It is a little unnerving.

When I was in my twenties, my boyfriend at the time was very upset at my decision to end our relationship. We had been together for a long time, he was my first boyfriend and the one I childishly imagined marrying when we in the early throes of our relationship.

I went to an all girls school in my teens, so the opportunity to meet boys was slim, I also had fairly strict parents who struggled with the idea of youth clubs and rollers discos. In those days my dad was a milkman and up at 3 am every day, so anyone leaving the house after 8 pm was unheard of. It was just not a thing in our house, children didn’t really have a life, unless you could walk to it and be home before the watershed. I barely left the house until I left school and if I did it was to sleep over at a friends, so we could go to the under 18’s disco on a Monday night. My friends parents always seemed a bit more flexible and never used to mind coming out at 10 o’clock at night to pick us up.

I think the big difference was that my friend all had older siblings, whereas I was the oldest sibling in my house. My parents hadn’t run the experiment of handling a teenager with anyone before me, I was the guinea pig. My friends parents had all been there before, they had kids that were now 17 and 19 and so on and they had pretty much made it, so dragging another 15 year old through it was going to be a piece of cake. The others had lived, what could possibly go wrong? But my parents, well, they were still erring on the side of caution.

Rules were rules and there was no breaking them in my house. Not if you wanted to go out again anyway.

How things have changed.

I take my children everywhere, all the time and at a moments notice usually. I pick them up and most of their friends and I am the house that seems to have all the extras living in it. I feed them all, they stay over and they come and they go, all the time. It’s like a bloody hotel.

When I was a kid though, things were different.

I was not allowed to have a boy, any boy, boyfriend or not, inside the house. We never had sleepovers of any kind because of my Dad’s job, but we knew that and it was fine, kind of. It was frustrating sure, but it was what it was. It did though, make dating and having a boyfriend quite difficult, but then I never really dated anyway, because I met the friend of the lad next door and that was that.

We were a couple, for ages.

We were together for almost ten years, but as we grew up together, we grew apart. We were kids when we met, he was trying to impress me by having a stinging nettle fight with the boy next door (who also fancied me at the time, this was not exclusive mind, he fancied all the girls), it’s what boys do apparently, it’s a peacock thing, a show of manliness, but impress me he did. I was only fifteen, it didn’t take much then.

Years later we moved in together, rented a flat and I thought it would be great, it wasn’t. It was dull and boring and we never had any money and I realised that the life I wanted wasn’t the same life he wanted. It was hard breaking away, we had been together for so long, we has been an item for ever, for nearly half of my then very short existence. We did everything together, maybe that was the problem. Needless to say, he didn’t take it very well.

I moved back home (that was to become a regular thing throughout my twenties and thirties, bless my poor Dad) and he became my shadow. Everywhere I went he was there somewhere, lurking or watching. It was fucking awful.

We used to have an alley behind the houses that led to some garages, I could see it from my bedroom window, it backed onto the garden. He would sit there often and just watch the house. He came to the house quite a bit, in the early stages, asking me to see him and at first I would because I felt like I owed him something, what I don’t know, time? Some answers? Answers that I didn’t really have, I never knew what to say. I had said it all. I didn’t love him and I didn’t want to be with him. He couldn’t accept it and still came every other day for a little while, until my Dad stepped in and eventually he stopped, but then he just went back to lurking in the alleyway behind the house.

It was an odd time. I wouldn’t say I was frightened of him, just wary.

I didn’t really understand why he was so upset, why he felt that there would be no one else for him. He threatened to kill himself a couple of times, I didn’t really believe him. Luckily he didn’t. I think he was just trying to scare me into going back to him. It all came to a bit of head when I went with him to visit his Mum in hospital. She was dying. It was a sad time, she was young still and of course I wanted to see her, in hindsight I should have gone alone, but honestly I didn’t ever think he would hurt me.

We came a to a very sad and sorry end. Quite unnecessarily.

I don’t really remember the finer details of it all, except it was the usual argument about us not getting back together, it escalated quickly as these things usually do. In all honesty I don’t think he meant to hurt me, he was just trying to stop me from leaving. It was what he had been trying to do since the day I told him I wanted to leave, but the more he tried to stop me, the easier it was to walk away. You can’t keep someone by force or by guilt or by making them feel responsible for you.

It was a horrible time and half the reason I moved away.

A couple of weeks ago I went on a socially distanced date, a walk in the park with a guy I had been chatting to online. We hadn’t really talked much but he was quite keen to meet and this works for me, as I usually like to get this done quite quickly myself. I am always happy to meet first see what’s what and then decide where you want to go from there…

So that’s what we did.

He was very keen to have sex and if I had of let him, he would have, right then and there. He talked a lot about how he hadn’t had sex for a long time and was clearly getting over excited about us having sex. He wanted me to go to his house that very weekend so we could go about the business of having sex. I told him I wasn’t overly keen and of course we are not really allowed, yet, but he wasn’t bothered. He said he didn’t mind if I didn’t fancy him, we could just do it anyway.

Jesus Christ! Is this a lockdown thing? Has everyone gone mad?

I think it is largely my own fault as I am too obliging sometimes. I should just meet, make up my mind and then go home, because if I stay and we have conversation and we ‘get along’ or we kiss, or touch or whatever, it means you like them, I think? It means that you are in. A couple? Surely not?

I am flirt, I can’t help it, I flirt with lamp posts.

I think this has gotten worse with age and that is a worry. I have realised how this may get me into trouble one day, especially as this week I received a letter detailing my shortcomings as a person. It was from him!

The letter was hand delivered to my place of work.

That’s a bit scary!

It basically said that I was being too hasty and that even if I had decided not to have sex with him I should have told him… HOLD ON. I thought did?

He was annoyed because I had stopped answering his messages and he thought that was rude. He thought he should take the time to write to me and hand deliver his note to my place of work so I could think about what I had done and how I should have just told him that I didn’t want to talk to him anymore… HOLD ON. I did do that, didn’t I?

The letter goes on to say that it is okay to be fussy, but not to be rude.

Good. I’m glad we are clear on that. Are we?

I blocked you.

I blocked you because I said I didn’t want to sleep with you and you kept messaging me to see if I might change my mind. I didn’t. I told you again that I won’t change my mind and that I don’t want to, but I hope you find someone etc etc … but I don’t think you believed me. I think you thought I would change my mind. We had the whole ‘fussy’ conversation and I apologised for being ‘fussy’ but still said I wasn’t going to change my mind. I didn’t see the point in us messaging anymore, as neither of us wanted to be friends, we were both looking for a lover, so I blocked you. I blocked you because that what we all do when no longer need or want to speak to that person anymore. Yes, I could have told you I was going to do it, but what the hell difference would that have made?

I’m not sure what else I could have said, without being rude.

I didn’t realise I had told him where I worked, I think I did say I worked for the NHS and that it was locally not at the hospital, but I wouldn’t have said where exactly. Or did I? I never have before so I’m not sure why I would have and we had barely messaged before we met so it is unlikely I gave him the bloody address.

Hopefully, he just wanted to have the last word and if that’s what this is all about then you can have it. You can consider me told. In all honesty it was a bit odd and a little unnerving and I won’t say it didn’t make me question myself, because it did.

Did I do anything wrong, I don’t know, possibly? I clearly pissed him off.

Weirdly he left his number at the bottom of the letter so I could call him if I wanted to chat…

Umm.. thanks, but I think we will leave that one there.

❤️